Photos courtesy Pritzker Prize
The Pritzker Architecture Prize has appointed Alejandro Aravena as chair of the Pritzker Architecture Prize jury and Manuela Lucá-Dazio as an advisor to the Prize and the next executive director, beginning in March 2021.
The Pritzker Prize is known internationally as architecture’s highest honor, and this coming year will mark the 43rd year of the accolade.
“We are pleased to welcome back Alejandro Aravena, and in a renewed capacity, as he brings with him a fresh model of leadership to steward our independent, international, and esteemed jury,” commented Tom Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foundation. “Likewise, we are delighted to work with Manuela Lucá-Dazio in this new season as we continue our privilege of honoring architects who have impressed upon the industry through the art of architecture and their service to humanity.”
Aravena, 2016 Pritzker Prize Laureate, is founder and executive director of ELEMENTAL, a “Do Tank” focusing on projects of public interest and social impact including housing, public space, infrastructure, and transportation. His mastery of architecture aides his commitment to society, resulting in works and activism that respond to social, humanitarian, and economic needs, a press release from Pritzker Architecture Prize said.
“Historically, architecture has been about creating innovative alternatives and imagining possibilities, but it is also intimately connected with society. As jurors, our task is, first, to be sensitive to those questions society would like the architectural profession to address, and to identify those architects that are trying to use the discipline’s body of knowledge to translate those questions into projects,” said Aravena. “I am honored to join this group effort aimed to improve the quality of the built environment.”
Aravena was the recipient of the 2019 Urban Land Institute (ULI) J.C. Nichols Prize, the 2018 RIBA Charles Jencks Award, and the first architect to receive the Gothenburg Sustainability Award in 2017. He was curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 and served on the Pritzker Prize Jury from 2009 to 2015. He is the ELEMENTAL copec chair at Universidad Católica de Chile, a former visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2000 and 2005), and has taught at Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (2005). He is a member of the advisory board of the Cities Program of the London School of Economics and is based in Santiago, Chile.
Lucá-Dazio most recently served as the executive director of the Department of Visual Arts and Architecture of La Biennale di Venezia. She has managed exhibitions with distinguished curators, architects, artists, and critics to realize the International Art Exhibition and the International Architecture Exhibition since 2009. Preceding that, she was responsible for the technical organization and production of both exhibitions, beginning in 1999. She holds a PhD in History of Architecture from the University of Roma-Chieti, Italy, and lives in Paris, France.
“It is for me an enormous honor to become the next executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, an essential point of reference in the architecture world, and even more at such a key historical moment for the architectural discourse and practice,” Lucá-Dazio said. “I look forward to joining the Pritzker Architecture Prize organization, to support its highly prestigious jury, and serve its mission to celebrate the quality in the profession for the enhancement of the built environment and the lives of those who inhabit it.”
